The navies of the Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iraq have signed an agreement to expand cooperation between the naval forces of the two countries.
The agreement was signed on Tuesday by the IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi and Commander of the Iraqi Navy Vice Admiral Ali Hussain Ali, Press TV reported.
The document calls for expanding cooperation between the two navies, arranging mutual visits for naval forces and holding joint drills.
Fadavi described the agreement as a beginning of further cooperation between the two countries in the north of the Persian Gulf region.
Fadavi, heading a high-raking military delegation, met Iraq’s senior commanders during a visit to the country’s naval facilities.
He held separate meetings with Iraq’s acting defense minister, chief of staff of the army and navy commander during his four-day visit to the neighboring country.
He also visited the Iraqi Navy’s operation center and Academy of Naval Sciences in the southern cities of Basra and Um Al-Qasr.

Persian Gulf Security Stressed
In the meeting with the Commander of the Iraqi navy Vice Admiral Ali Hussain Ali, Fadavi also said regional Muslim countries must work to ensure security in the Persian Gulf.
The commander said Iran’s deterrence power was aimed at ensuring the security of the region.
He opposed the presence of foreign forces in the strategic Persian Gulf region.
“There is a good opportunity to achieve collective security for regional countries,” Fadavi stated.
The commander also pointed to the role that ‘the very good relations between Iran and Iraq can have in maintaining security in the region’.
In recent years, Iran Navy has been increasing its presence in international waters to protect naval routes and provide security for Iranian merchant vessels and tankers.
In November 2012, Russia’s Caspian Flotilla Commander Rear Admiral Sergei Alekminski called for closer cooperation between Iranian and Russian naval forces. He said a fleet of Russian ships and frigates would pay a visit to an Iranian port in 2013.
Iran Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said in February 2012 that the naval forces of a number of neighboring countries have expressed desire to send fleets to Iran and Tehran is ready to welcome them.
Iran Navy has also sent vessels to the Indian Ocean and dispatched two ships via the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea for the first time in February 2011.
The Islamic Republic has repeatedly assured other nations, especially its neighbors, that its military might poses no threat to other countries, insisting that its defense doctrine is based on deterrence.

NAM Role in N-Disarmament Urged

Iran has called on the members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to play a ‘serious and active’ role in an upcoming nuclear disarmament meeting of the United Nations.
Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Mohammad Khazaei in letters to the permanent representatives of NAM member states at the UN on Tuesday called on them to participate ‘at the highest level’ in the disarmament conference, which is scheduled to be held in September, Press TV reported.
Referring to a resolution initiated by NAM and ratified at the UN General Assembly in 2012, Khazaei said, “Based on the resolution, a one-day high-level meeting is to be held in September at the UN to review complete nuclear disarmament.”
The envoy stressed that the issue of destroying nuclear weapons had been one of the top priorities of the NAM movement since its establishment in 1961.
In August 2012, Iran assumed the rotating presidency of NAM for a three-year term during the movement’s summit in Tehran. Nearly two-thirds of UN member states are also member countries of the NAM.
Last week, NAM held an extraordinary meeting to discuss its positions for the upcoming Review Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) due to be held in 2015.
During the meeting, Khazaei called for stronger action to support the countries that have signed the NPT to access peaceful nuclear technology.

Venezuelan Envoy Submits Credentials

New Venezuelan Ambassador Amenhotep Zambrano submitted a copy of his credentials to the Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.
During the meeting in Tehran on Wednesday, Salehi expressed sorrow over the passing away of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and hoped the heritage he has left behind by appointing credible personalities at top of affairs in the country would help the Venezuelan government and nation continue their path easily, IRNA reported. Salehi also expressed hope that the two countries of Iran and Venezuela would further deepen ties. The Venezuelan ambassador described mutual ties as brotherly and said he would do his best to further advance relations.

Argo, CIA’s Covert Black Ops

By Dr. Kevin Barrett

Is Argo ‘just a movie?’ Or is it a disguised intelligence operation--maybe even a war crime?
These questions may soon be answered in court. Well-known French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre has met Iranian officials planning a lawsuit against the makers and distributors of the controversial film.
Mohammad Lesani, general secretary of Monday’s Hoax of Hollywood conference in Tehran, announced, “Argo is made by three film-producing companies in Hollywood...the Islamic Republic of Iran is going to sue all those who have been active in the anti-Iran domain, including directors and producers.”
If the makers of Argo are deposed under oath, they may be forced to reveal that their film--like the fictitious film-within-the-film--is a covert operation disguised as a movie. One of America’s leading experts on covert operations believes that Argo is the propaganda project of an intelligence agency or agencies, and that its purpose is to convince the American people to go along with Israel’s plan to drag America into a war on Iran.
That expert, Barbara Honegger, was a special assistant to the president as well as White House policy analyst (1981-83), and worked for over a decade as senior military affairs journalist with the Naval Postgraduate School, the premiere science, technology and national security affairs graduate research university of the US Department of Defense. The author of October Surprise, she is one of America’s leading experts on ultra-secretive covert operations or ‘black ops’.
In a radio interview Tuesday on the Kevin Barrett Show, Honegger stated that filmmaker Ben Affleck might one day be hanged for war crimes and treason--not only for Argo, which she said is designed to pave the road to war on Iran, but also for his role in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, an earlier intelligence operation designed to pave the road to the 9/11 ‘New Pearl Harbor’. According to Honegger, Affleck--like his character in Argo--appears to be a covert operator posing as a filmmaker.
At the 2001 Golden Raspberry Awards, Pearl Harbor was nominated for six awards: Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor (Ben Affleck), Worst Screenplay, Worst Screen Couple, and Worst Remake or Sequel. This pathetic excuse for a movie cost over $150 million. Whoever invested that $150 million was not interested in making money--or even making a movie. Pearl Harbor had only one purpose: To spread the ‘Pearl Harbor’ meme in the public mind in preparation for 9/11. In a sense, Pearl Harbor was like Argo’s fictional science fiction film-within-a-film: It was a fake movie, but a real intelligence operation.
Donald Rumsfeld, like Affleck and the makers of Pearl Harbor, spent 2000 and 2001 hyping the ‘Pearl Harbor’ meme in preparation for 9/11. According to Swiss researcher TH Meyer, Rumsfeld gave away hundreds if not thousands of copies of Roberta Wohlstetter’s book Pearl Harbor, ‘Warning and Decision’. (Roberta Wohlstetter was the wife of neocon godfather and rabid Zionist Albert Wohlstetter, Paul Wolfowitz’s mentor, named in his obituary ‘The world’s most influential unknown figure of the past half-century’.)
Rumsfeld’s (and Affleck’s) Pearl Harbor propaganda campaign set the stage for the chorus of ‘Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor’ on September 11th, 2001. On Air Force One, as Bush flew from Florida to Nebraska, the event was already being framed as a new Pearl Harbor. Henry Kissinger quickly echoed the Pearl Harbor comparison. Zbigniew Brezezinski pronounced, “It (9/11) is more murderous even than Pearl Harbor, and the psychological impact is the same.” On the evening of September 11th, 2001, George W. Bush reportedly confided to his diary, ‘The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today’.
In Argo, the fake film (and real covert operation) is a CIA project, and Affleck plays a CIA agent. But were the Pearl Harbor and Argo movies covert operations by the CIA or by the Israeli Mossad?
Barbara Honegger, who has been studying intelligence agencies and their covert operations for three decades, said that both films ‘appear to have made by the CIA--or worse’. I asked what she meant by ‘or worse’.
Honegger suggested that the criminal, drug-smuggling, 9/11-complicit ‘Bush crime family’ wing of the CIA may have been working with the Israeli Mossad in all three co-productions: The movies Pearl Harbor and Argo, and the 9/11 covert operation itself.
Honegger voiced her hopes that the Argo covert operation will ‘blow up in Ben Affleck’s face’. How?
According to Honegger, Argo has stimulated US public interest in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis--and that as a result, the story of the 1980 ‘October Surprise’ that overthrew US president Jimmy Carter in a CIA coup d’état is being picked up by the mainstream media.
Honegger stated that the Bush-linked criminal wing of the CIA, in some cases together with the Israeli Mossad, perpetrated several of the worst crimes in recent history, including the JFK assassination and the 9/11 false-flag event. She said that the same forces, led by extremist Likud elements in Israel, are planning to launch a war on Iran, via a false-flag attack against a US ship in the Persian Gulf, by this summer.
According to Honegger, the exposure of the 1980 ‘October Surprise’ can help prevent such a war.
Will Ben Affleck, and other covert operators working to launch a criminal war of aggression against Iran, ever be brought to justice? Iran’s lawsuit against the makers of Argo is a good place to start.
Press TV

Army Missile Drill Underway

Ground Forces of the Iranian Army are planning to stage a one-day missile drill in central Iran on Thursday.
The massive military exercise will involve the missile and rocket-launching units of the Iranian Army Ground Forces.
Brigadier General Kioumars Heidari, second-in-command of the Army Ground Forces’ chief, had said recently that three missiles are to be test-fired in desert operations.
On Sunday, Commander of the Iranian Army Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan said new indigenous missile systems are to be test-fired in an upcoming military exercise.
He said the maneuver is aimed at maintaining the preparedness and enhancing the defensive capabilities of the forces’ rocket-launching and missile units.
Iran Army Ground Forces launched drills in southwestern Khuzestan province on Saturday with the participation of tanks, artillery and mechanized units.
Over the past few years, Iran has held several military drills to enhance the defense capabilities of its armed forces and to test modern military tactics and equipment.
The Islamic Republic has repeatedly assured other nations, especially its neighbors, that its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that its defense capabilities purely serve as a deterrence.

Report on Support For Armenian Militants Baseless

Iranian ambassador to Azerbaijan has rejected as ‘baseless’ a report claiming that Tehran had supported Armenian militants during Karabakh conflict in the early 1990s.
Commenting on the news posted on ‘Irandiplomacy’ website, Mohsen Pakaein told Azeri television APA TV on Tuesday said that the claim ‘is the translation of a sentence from the article posted by western media. The name of the article is ‘Tel-Aviv and Azerbaijan against Iran’.’
He noted that the article ‘aims to disrupt Azerbaijan-Iran relations. This news is completely baseless’.
“Iran recognizes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and supports its sovereignty. Azerbaijan recognizes territorial integrity and borders of Iran as well. All these are basic points and should be taken into account,” he said. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia claim the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is largely populated by Armenians but located in Azerbaijan.
Ethnic Armenian forces took control of the enclave, which accounts for 16 percent of Azerbaijan, in the early 1990s during a six-year war from February 1988 to May 1994.
The conflict left an estimated 30,000 people dead and one million others displaced before the two sides agreed to a cease-fire in 1994. However, a peace accord has never been signed and the dispute still remains unsettled.
Iran has on several occasions offered to mediate in the dispute.